Rikuzel
by silvermyth
Summary: What if Rapunzel was male? Rapunzel, only it's Riku.
**A/N:** From tumblr prompt, Riku as Rapunzel, from anonymous. This was meant to be shorter, but I love me some fairy tales. And Rikus. So much love.

 **Rikuzel**

When Rikuzel turned twelve, Dame Gothel took him on a journey from her spacious mansion to the country. There, she led him into tower, and up to the very top, though later he would not be able to recall quite how he'd gotten there, as the tower had neither stairs nor doors, as far as he could discern. It was there she left him, for his protection, she assured him, because she had enemies that would target her weakness, and surely Riku knew that he was her only weakness.

He was angry, at first. The tower was much smaller than the mansion, but after a while, he realized it wasn't much different otherwise. It was, in fact, larger inside than he had first supposed, and even if it hadn't been, Dame Gothel hadn't been fond of his penchant for adventure. He knew that from the time she'd spanked him for finding a secret door, and getting lost in the passages that wound through the hidden depths of the mansion.

The way Dame Gothel put it, he was better in the tower, anyway. Less trouble for him to get into.

Still, he spent the days and nights gazing out the window at the trees and the countryside, imagining the world that lay out there, waiting to be explored. He sang of the adventures that lay beyond the stone walls of his tower. But those adventures would always be had by someone other than Riku, because after years, he still hadn't found a way out of the tower, except by its sole window. That was how Dame Gothel got in and out, after all, announcing her daily visits with her call up, "Rikuzel, Rikuzel, let down your hair!"

For Riku's hair had grown long, so long that when Dame Gothel secured it in a silvery plait, it reached nearly to the bottom of the tower when he hung it from a hook at the window, and she would climb it up like a ladder.

A small part of Riku knew that he could cut away the hair, and make the descent on his own, but whenever he thought about that, his belly curled with something unpleasant, and the thought quickly flew from his mind.

Years passed. Not that it mattered, stuck in his tower as he was.

He found a wooden sword hidden in a chest once, and sometimes he pretended he was a knight, battling dragons, or whatever darkness he conjured in his imagination, but those games were only fun for so long. He read books, when he could beg them off of Dame Gothel, and though the books she brought were often dull, he still devoured them. Composed new songs from a rare novel, that he sang to the blue sky outside his window.

"Hey!" Riku was startled by the voice that called up to him one evening, an unfamiliar one that belonged to a head of brown hair when he looked down to the foot of the tower.

Riku stared; he hadn't seen any people other than Dame Gothel in several years, and so he blinked in bemusement at the person standing there. "Um. Hi."

A flash of teeth in a wide grin, visible even from his high-up window. "Hi! Was that you singing, just now?"

Riku propped his arms on the windowsill. "Yeah."

"Well, you sounded very lovely!"

"Um. Thanks?"

Another flash of teeth. "You're welcome. Hey, I don't suppose you would want to come down here so I could speak to you properly?"

Riku frowned. "That's not possible."

The grin faltered. "Oh. That's a shame."

Riku's frown deepened into a scowl, and he found he wanted to explain why to the bright person down there. "Um. You see, this window is the only way in and out. It's a bit far."

"Oh." The brown head tilted down, presumably to scan the tower for an entrance, then snapped back up to Riku. "Really?"

"Yeah."

Riku's mouth fell open as the brown-haired person started walking in a circle around the tower, worried that his company would abandon him, but it was only a minute before they reappeared. "Well then, how did you get up there?"

Riku shrugged, realized he might not be seen from this distance. "I don't know. I can't remember. I've been here a long time, though. There's no other way in or out."

There was a pause as the person processed this. "You don't get many visitors, I take it? That must be lonely."

"Dame Gothel comes most days. But no one else." Riku thought, briefly, of the length of braid coiled behind him, but Dame Gothel had warned him of strangers. Her enemies. Only if someone were to address him, _Rikuzel, Rikuzel, let down your hair,_ was he to let it down. He narrowed his eyes. This person didn't seem dangerous, at least.

"Well. How about I come and visit, then? I could keep you company."

Riku leaned further out the window, to get a better look at the stranger; it was growing darker, and harder to see. "If you like."

"Well, I'd like to hear you sing again." A smaller gleam of teeth, this time. "I'm Sora, by the way."

"Riku."

"Okay, Riku. I'll come again tomorrow!" Sora gave a little wave. "I have to go for now, but I'll be back!"

Riku waved back, and watched Sora disappear into the woods. He wondered if his visitor really would return, or if it had only been a dream. When he closed his eyes to sleep, he often dreamed, of flying through the sky, and falling, tumbling down and down.

Dame Gothel's voice pulled him from sleep the next morning, and he was certain by then that Sora was only a night time imagining.

She told him that next year he would be a man, and she would be able to marry him and take him away from the tower. Riku wasn't sure what that entailed, having never had interaction outside of the careful bubble Dame Gothel kept him in, but he would be happy to leave the tower. That part he kept to himself, and only smiled and nodded, as the dame expected him to.

He sighed at the window casement after she left, impatient to see the world beyond his tower, and so tired of boredom. He was just drifting off there, when a voice called up to him—not Dame Gothel's, but Sora's again. Riku's eyebrows lifted in surprise.

"No singing tonight?"

"I don't feel like singing."

"No? Is everything okay?" There was a warmth in Sora's voice that Riku wasn't used to hearing in Dame Gothel's words, and Riku felt himself being drawn a little out of his ennui.

"Just…you know, there's so much more out there than this little tower. I'm going to see it someday, Dame Gothel promised. But it seems so far away."

Sora was quiet for a moment, and then, "I'm sure there's a way out of there. I'll look again!"

Riku leaned out the window a bit, and watched Sora scurry around the base of the tower again, this time backing up several times, or moving really close to the stone, glancing up and down.

"You know," Sora's voice was softer from the other side of the tower, "I bet there's a way in, if only we had the key. Everything has a key, right? It just takes different forms." Sora reappeared on Riku's side of the tower, scratching at brown hair.

"I suppose so."

"Well, if you don't feel like singing, how about I entertain you, this time? I have lots of funny stories. My friends, they're characters, like you wouldn't believe!"

Riku pressed against the casement, ears perking up for a story. "Please, I would like to hear it."

So Sora began with a hunting tale, in which his friend—Goofy, they called him—made a navigation error that took them miles away from the hunting grounds and into a run-in with a gypsy caravan, and all that ensued. Riku listened, enraptured by the tale. It was like one of the adventures he'd imagined, but richer, filled with people that made Sora laugh in the telling, and Riku felt warm, hearing that rich tinkle of sound spilling up from below.

After that, Riku's days took a new routine. Dame Gothel would still visit most days, but so would Sora come, usually in the evenings, and Riku would trade songs and stories with Sora until twilight stole over the sky and Sora had to leave again.

The routine changed again with the season, as summer was cooling into autumn. Riku was used to Sora's voice by then, but the words surprised him, when Sora called out, "Rikuzel, Rikuzel, let down your hair!" It was automatic, to secure his braid on the hook by the window, and let the coils slither down—they reached all the way to the ground now—and Sora scrambled up with a speed and dexterity that Dame Gothel had never had.

"Oh." Riku was quick to gather his hair back into its coils as he stepped away from the window, to let Sora step off the window sill.

"I found a way up! I knew there was a way." Sora beamed, and Riku thought, his smile was even bigger up close, and his eyes were as blue as the sky.

So he said so. "Your eyes are very blue. Like the sky."

Sora tilted his head, trying to see past the silvery bangs that fell over Riku's eyes. Then, that proving unsuccessful, he brushed it back with a warm hand that sent Riku's skin tingling. "Yours are very green. Like the sea."

"I've never seen the sea," Riku confessed.

Sora's hands dropped to the window sill, and he leaned back on them, looking at the ceiling as he launched into a tale about the sea, and how it could be gentle and beautiful, but how it was dangerous and frightening when it was in a fury. And how he wondered if maybe Riku was like that, if he would be a tyrant if ever he was angry. Riku admitted he was, and told him how he'd broken things, when he'd first come to the tower, but that he hadn't felt angry in a long time now.

Sora was quiet when he said that, and Riku didn't know what that look in his eyes meant.

Riku followed as Sora explored the tower, and answered questions of where he got this or that—Dame Gothel had brought it—or how the furniture had gotten up there, because how would Riku haul a whole bed up with only a rope of hair? And Riku admitted that some of it had already been there when he'd arrived.

From then, when Sora visited, he would call up for Riku to let his hair down. Sometimes, he would look around the tower again, but most times they would exchange stories and songs, like before, but now punctuated with a closeness that Riku began to crave. When Sora bumped or brushed into him, Riku felt warm, and wished for more.

"Don't you want to leave this tower?" Sora asked one day. "You could cut your hair, and climb down."

Riku opened his mouth, closed it. Wasn't sure why, but he knew he couldn't. "But what about Dame Gothel?"

"Isn't she the one who put you here?"

Riku was quiet for a while. Finally, "I can't."

That day, before Sora left, he paused at the window and cupped Riku's cheek with one hand. "I'll find another key, then. One you can use, too." Riku knew, from what Sora told him, that the brush of Sora's lips on his was a kiss, and he felt breathless and hot all over as Sora lowered himself down the length of his silvery braid.

When Sora next came, Riku initiated the kiss, a hot, burning thing, and he found that he could explore Sora's mouth with his tongue, and that was new, and exciting, and Riku knew he wanted to explore all of Sora. Wanted Sora to explore all of him, and it would be like an adventure all on its own. And that little taste made him want more, so much more, beyond his life in the tower.

It was a handful of days later that Dame Gothel spoke of their marriage again, before Riku could do more than share a heated kiss with Sora. Riku knew, by then, what marriage entailed, and when his blood boiled in anger, he remembered what Sora had said, about the sea's fury, and wondered what Sora would think, if he saw him like that. Still, despite his anger, or perhaps, because of it, Dame Gothel's anger was even more fierce. And then the words spilled out of his mouth—"I don't want to marry you, I want to marry Sora!" he clapped a hand over his mouth, but it was too late.

She didn't ask who Sora was. She didn't need to, because it wouldn't matter to her; she produced a pair of shears and cut the braid from Riku, coiled it by the window as he stood, fists balled at his sides but finding himself unable to move against Dame Gothel. She snapped her fingers, and there was a rush of wind that sent Riku stumbling to his hands and knees. And when he looked up, he was surrounded by darkness, a cold, swirling, blue and purple-tinged miasma that seeped into his skin, his heart.

It seemed like a long time, that Riku wandered the dark desert that Dame Gothel had banished him to. Years, maybe.

It wasn't entirely featureless. There were rock formations, and sometimes water lapping at dark sand, and up in the perpetually dark sky, pinpoints of stars. He missed the blue of a cloudless day sky, the blue that matched Sora's eyes, and he wondered if those blue eyes turned upwards to look at the same stars that Riku saw.

If he still had a thirst for adventure, it was quenched in that dark realm. He had to fight to survive, tooth and nail against creeping, shadowy creatures, and he had to find food for himself, something he'd never had to worry about before. He was glad that the heavy weight of his hair was gone, during those times, because surely it would've been a hindrance to his exploits.

But when he brushed the silvery strands behind an ear, he wondered if Sora would recognize him like this. That thought made him lonely, made his throat clench and his heart hurt.

He thought he heard a bird, once, in that dark place. He couldn't find it, but it reminded him of what had brought Sora to him in the first place: his singing. And so, even when he didn't feel like it, Riku sang. They were no longer songs of adventure, but songs of sorrow. Songs of longing.

It was hard to measure time without a sun.

And when Riku did see light again, it hurt his eyes. So much that he pressed a scrap of cloth over them, but he felt it on his skin, warm and inviting, and he moved towards it, singing, for once, with hope.

He wasn't surprised, not exactly, when warm, calloused fingers touched him, pulled away the cloth from his eyes. When blue eyes met teal, and Sora hugged him tight and close. " _I thought I lost you._ "

Sora stroked his hair, fingers threading through to the ends, and Riku felt unsettled that it was so short. But Sora still kissed the fall of silver, and this time, the story he told was theirs. That when he had called for Riku to let down his hair, there was instead a furious, dark-haired enchantress. She had threatened his life, but he escaped, barely, though for a long time he had forgotten himself. Forgotten about Riku, and wandered, aimless, through the woods. Until he heard a voice singing from far away, and he followed it. His mind pieced itself back together as he moved towards the voice, and when he saw Riku, it had all clicked back together.

"I'm so sorry," Riku whispered. "It's all my fault."

But Sora only shook his head. "It's not your fault, Riku."

And when they kissed again, it was as if they had to make up for lost time, and they made sure they explored each other fully, this time, slowly, despite the urgency they both felt.

"We can go home, for a little while. But I want to show you so many things, after!" Sora's hands felt good in Riku's hair, and he decided that it wasn't so bad, short.

"An adventure?" He traced one of Sora's tanned shoulders. "With you? You promise?"

Sora pressed a kiss against his temple. "I promise."

And Sora had never broken a promise.


End file.
